For more than half a century, Dr. Robert R. Webster has been a dedicated veterinarian and breeder, and his work has earned him claim to a unique Canadian breeding record. While the 78-year-old resident of Prince Edward Island may have slowed down in the past few years after suffering a heart attack, there is no quit in this passionate horseman.
By Brittney Mayotte
Bob’s unique breeding record is one he holds even over all of the large, well-known breeding farms in Canada He has bred and registered at least one standardbred foal each and every year for 40 consecutive years. It’s the longest active streak north of the border.
“Oh, I don’t think about things like that,” laughs Bob when told he holds the record. “It’s a bad thing to be thinking of yourself. You’re just as well to go along and do what you have to do and enjoy what you’re doing. And I just enjoyed it, I just enjoy breeding mares and raising foals. You have success, but boy you have a lot of things that go wrong too when you have a lot of horses around. It’s not all fun times, that’s for sure, and now it’s worse. I wouldn’t want to be a young fella buying a farm and doing what I did. I think he’d lose his shirt. But in those days you could make a bit of money out of it.”
The third generation horseman was first introduced to harness racing as a young boy back in the 1930s, when he would tag along with his father, Wilber, to Old Home Week. His experience working with horses came early in life as they were his family’s main means of transportation into town from their small, water-powered flour and sawmill farm in Marie, Prince Edward Island. “I was never without a job, even at a very young age,” recalls Bob, who purchased his first farm horse at 12 years old for just $50.
Meanwhile, his father, a World War I veteran, owned a stud by the turn of the century trotting sire Bingen. “That’s a pretty old breed,” Bob smiles. “You have to go back a long way to get Bingen.”
Going back even further in time, Bob’s grandfather, for whom he had been named, was also a horseman.
Bob grew up on his family’s farm in the small town while attending a one room schoolhouse. After missing a couple years of education due to his father’s ailing health, he set his sights on becoming a veterinarian, and with the encouragement of some very supportive neighbours, Bob returned to school to pursue his career. Despite facing the learning handicaps associated with dyslexia, he persevered throughout his studies at the Prince Of Wales College in Charlottetown for four years and then at the Ontario Veterinary College (now the University of Guelph) for another five years.
Throughout his college education and even after graduation, Bob visited many of Ontario’s breeding farms including the renowned Armstrong Brothers farm with his colleague, Dr. Glen Brown, who later became the Armbro farm manager and veterinarian.
“I went to all the breeding farms pretty much and tried to learn what I could from them because we didn’t get any of that training in college,” he explains. “They told us we should be working on tractors, not horses, because horses were extinct.”
Bob’s interest in horses, though, was too strong to abandon. Upon graduation in 1959, he returned to P.E.I. to work in a mixed practice, but was soon drawn to equine medicine and reproduction.
Bob, who served as director of the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) for 10 years representing Atlantic Canada, practised veterinary medicine for 35 years until he and his partners sold their practice in 1987 to the veterinary college. Bob later retired in 1994, but still kept up his license to continue reproductive work at the farm for 15 more years.
While practising, Bob began his small breeding operation when he and his wife, Nina, purchased a farm in 1972 called Hollylaine Island Farm. It was that year he began his breeding streak –starting out with just one foal. “It all started very low key as we had four daughters to raise and bills to pay,” Bob admits. “We bought this farm in Brookfield, which needed buildings, fences and fertilizer, but it was in a prime location.”
He purchased his first stud in 1976, A C S Dandy, with a solid 2:00 record and stood many others over the years, including Lightning Speed, Stargaze Hanover, Nukes Lobell, This Cams For You, Lisryan, Force Of Life and Sea Gull Hershey.
“This Cams For You gave us the most memories,” he notes. While the son of Cam Fella out of Tarsola Hanover wasn’t quite the sire they hoped he’d be, he turned out to be a tough racehorse despite suffering a serious injury earlier in his career. Bob purchased This Cams For You for breeding purposes after he had broken his hind leg, which required two plates and 13 screws. After standing stud duty for one year, the pacer, Bob could see, was keen to compete.
“He wanted to race and wasn’t content just being a stud,” he says. “After we bred mares for a year, I started hitching him and I started training him and he came along like a house on fire. He taught me a lot about training horses. He wanted to be a winner and would dig in at the last leg of the race and forge his way to the top.”
This Cams For You made it back to the races and competed on the Maritime Invitational circuit and in Quebec throughout the mid to late 1990s. He was even a starter in the 1996 Gold Cup & Saucer. While the stud provided Bob and his family with plenty of thrills on the racetrack, the horseman has also enjoyed much success as a relatively small breeder. He has raised somewhere in the neighbouhood of 350 foals over the years, including multiple top Maritime stakes performers. Among his champions were Island Cindy, Island Quisite, Island Ribbon, Island Reba, Island Storm, Island Tradition, Island Galeforce, and Island Redemption.
Bob was recently recognized as the top breeder in the P.E.I. Colt Stakes over the last 75 years, and won the Glen Kennedy Memorial Award twice for exceptional contributions to the breeding industry. Additionally, a number of his foals have been named top colts and fillies in the Maritimes.
Through all his success though, Bob remains humble and down to earth. His biggest accomplishments in life revolve around his family and close friends. “We raised four daughters and now have six grandsons and three granddaughters,” notes the family man when asked what he is most proud of in his life. “We were able to pay our bills and have a comfortable retirement due in part to our good friend and competent accountant of 52 years, Jack Mulligan. We got through 2009 alive after a severe heart attack and after the health issue we were able to drastically reduce our horse population and still enjoy life on the farm.”
Bob’s dedication and passion have been apparent not only in his career, but also in his family life. He and his wife have been married for an incredible 54 years; the couple met while Bob was home for the summer during his studies at veterinary college and Nina was in P.E.I. on holidays.
“We met here on the Island at a place called The Rollaway – that was a place to dance,” recalls Nina, who worked as a dental assistant in Halifax at the time. “In fact, he saw me on the street first. He eyed me up and said ‘I wouldn’t mind going out with her,’ and that night he met me at the dance. He went home later and called his sister Millie and said, ‘I just met the girl I’m going to marry.’ We were married the next year!”
Today, the couple has four daughters, Barbie, Janet, Susan and Nancy, who all work in the medical field. Their two eldest daughters provided inspiration for the farm moniker as their middle names were combined to make up ‘Hollylaine.’ “All of the family enjoyed the horses, especially Nancy,” says Bob of his youngest daughter, who is married to Greg Peck, trainer of triple millionaire trotter Muscle Hill. “She trained and looked after our stable one summer until I persuaded her to get a good education and forget about making a living in the race business. My wife Nina is very involved with the office, sales, registrations, taking yearling pictures for the sales, posters and in naming the foals.”
These days, the work on the 75 acre farm is winding down as the Websters rented some of the land to local vegetable growers. “That kind of makes it a little bit better so we don’t have to be working the land,” says Bob, who is readying for his annual winter retreat in Florida. “We only have four mares and we don’t have a stud anymore because they can be rough on you sometimes.
“We had two foals last year and two foals this year. We may keep them, you never know. I don’t plan ahead too far. Sometimes I like to train one and have them around. It’s fun in the summertime going around to all the different racetracks. It’s kind of something to do. We had some pretty good results in the years gone by, but once you get down in numbers you’re going to be down in that too.”
Despite the downsizing, Bob has no plans in the near future to stop breeding his own mares. “If I didn’t enjoy it I wouldn’t be doing it,” he smiles.